Tethered
by lostsoul512
Summary: Jaina has studied many things- none have ever been as difficult to comprehend as the Banshee Queen. ((Oneshot set in Halls of Reflection.))


For the record, all she'd ever wanted to do was study.

Jaina Proudmoore had always considered this to be a simple request- the desire for knowledge, and then more knowledge after that- and so from the day that she was tall enough to pull the tomes off the shelves in her seaside home she had studied.

She'd studied the intricately detailed drawings when she had not yet learned to read, and the intricately woven text when she had, devouring pages upon pages with little regard for the content, reading one after the other and then reading them again, until the pages were frayed and the covers were worn and the ink was smudged by her fingertips and the sticky salt air.

In a week, she had covered the entire history of Kul Tiras- in a month, Lordaeron and Stormwind both.

Sometimes, when her father returned from his travels, he would greet her with a new book instead of a hug, but she never minded- she'd hug the book to her chest instead, and by the time time he'd set sail once again, she'd have read it twice.

She'd studied anything she could get her hands on with little regard for content, until she got her hands on her very first spellbook, and from that moment she had craved nothing else.

By the next full moon, she'd read every book on magic that her nation had to offer. By the next spring, she'd been sent to Dalaran.

After that, she'd studied nothing but magic, theories and practice and knowledge and capability, until she'd grasped the precision of frost, the manipulation of fire and the delicate construction of arcane runes. She'd practiced her spells, one after the other and then practicing them again, and when her body ached with exhaustion she'd crawled into bed and read through the comfortingly tattered pages of her childhood favorites until she fell asleep.

She'd studied other things, too, over the years, like the intricate overlapping veins of ley lines embedded into the soil underneath Dalaran and the sickening remnants left behind by the exiled mage Kel'Thuzad and the way that the sunlight gleamed off the golden hair and polished armor of Arthas Menethil-

This subject had, for a long time, been her favorite.

She'd studied him intently, deliberately and in immense detail, and when she'd finished she'd studied him again- this time a bit faster, a bit rougher- until her fingertips knew by memory each rise of his chest and dip of his ribcage, until the sound of his heartbeat and the way he whispered her name like a plea or maybe a prayer was all that she knew. She'd studied him until everything else that she had ever studied seemed a distant memory, and every time she left his side she felt lost and powerless, like in his absence she would have to learn all over again everything that she had ever known before him.

She'd studied the way that his lips twitched at the corners when he was amused and the way that his brows pulled together when he was upset, and with careful examination and a heart shattered into more pieces than any book had ever led her to believe was possible, she'd studied him walking away without ever looking back.

After that, she'd studied things such as how to rebuild homes and hope for people that had lost faith in both and how to look someone in the eye and assure them that yes, she was fine- just tired, that's all, up late reading again- and how to rearrange the pieces of her broken heart into something that passed as whole.

For the record, she'd been studying that particular subject matter for seven years, and she felt no closer to understanding it now than she had when she'd started.

Presently, she was studying the cursed blade Frostmourne, overwhelming and ominous and entirely off-putting, bathed in the iridescent glow of its own runes. With hesitant steps she paced around the pedestal; with narrowed eyes she examined the sword- even from a safe distance she could feel the raw power, the malevolence trapped within, and she could feel her heart thudding in her chest, each individual piece reverberating in some uneven rhythm. Jaina had studied many things in her life, but she had never encountered something so inherently _wrong_ as the blade that had destroyed her kingdom, her home, her _prince_ -

"Are you nearly finished?"

The words were sharp enough to to slice through her concentration, and so it was with a jolt that Jaina turned her gaze onto Sylvanas Windrunner, who stood a few paces away with her arms crossed tightly over her breastplate.

The Banshee Queen's voice was the only thing Jaina had ever encountered that was colder than Northrend itself. But she had studied peace and passivity and the importance of uniting with the Horde, and so she kept her own voice as warm as she could. "I'm sorry," she replied. "It's just…" The breath that she sucked in was almost as shaky as her hands, exhaled in a tiny cloud that twisted into the air and then disappeared. "I didn't expect that I would feel this…"

She let the sentence twist into the air and disappear too; she didn't think she'd have had the strength to finish even if she had the words.

Jaina had studied the Dark Lady only briefly; she'd grasped in that time her impatience and indifference and general disdain for most everything that remained in the world. But she had not studied her enough to expect the way that she shifted her weight and fixated her glowing crimson eyes on the sword, seeming to shrink into herself- suddenly the arms crossed over her chest seemed to be wrapped around herself instead, and Jaina wondered if maybe they were not so different, just trying to keep themselves together when both of their lives had been so irreparably torn apart.

"Standing this close to the blade that ended my life," she murmured lowly, the words caught something between malice and hurt. "The pain...it is renewed."

"I'm sorry," Jaina repeated, more sincere this time, studying the Banshee Queen for any sign of emotion, some flicker of grief or understanding. "What happened to your homeland and- and to you- it's unforgivable-"

"And yet you stare at that sword like it contains the power to restore him to the man that you loved," Sylvanas interrupted, swift and sharp as an arrow.

If the mark had been Jaina's bleeding heart, she'd hit it dead center. Her lips parted again, but all that came out was a string of incoherent sounds that wanted very desperately to form a lie of denial. Sylvanas' expression was fierce, unwavering- whatever fleeting sign of feeling she had allowed herself to show was gone now, trapped under pallid flesh and armor. "Do you believe me to be so foolish that I am unaware as to your true motives here, Proudmoore?" She asked then. "You may have fooled your king and my warchief, but I am not so easily deceived."

"Arthas is dead," Jaina blurted, hollow words that sounded far too rehearsed. She'd studied the art of lying to protect her own heart, but some lies would always lodge themselves in her throat until she felt like she was choking.

"He is a monster," the Dark Lady corrected, lifting her chin. "He is a monster now and he was a monster then."

Jaina's patience had been a steadily fraying thread; at last, she felt it snap. "He was a good man once." He was- she had seen it, had _felt_ it when he had held her and kissed her and told her that he loved her.

The Banshee Queen had no patience to begin with; she scoffed at the sentiment like the mere idea offended her. "Good men can do terrible things," she rebuked. "Terrible men do terrible things and laugh while they are doing them."

She turned away then, and Jaina studied the way that her posture shifted, her gaze averting and her pale hair falling around the sharp features of her face. "Whatever you're trying to do, hurry up and do it," she ordered then, and retreated away from the mage.

Jaina turned away too, tried to ignoring the sting of rejection- mere seconds ago, Jaina had thought her to be fragile and suffering, but she was realizing now how terribly wrong she had been. In the span of a few breaths Sylvanas had grown into something else entirely, and now when Jaina studied her she saw nothing but an empty body pretending to house a soul that was just as tethered to the Lich King as those still under his command.

With her gaze back on the sword, Jaina felt the creeping familiarity of pain- Sylvanas had been right, of course; Jaina had been wondering from the moment she'd arrived in Icecrown if such a thing were possible, if perhaps there was a way to liberate Arthas from the curse that held him captive, if perhaps she could save him when she had failed to save so many others.

All she'd ever wanted to do was study, but it was a different thing entirely to look inward and study herself. In the iridescent glow of Frostmourne's runes, the truth became so achingly clear that it was impossible to deny- against all odds, Jaina Proudmoore had survived each obstacle placed in her way, but even as her heart beat and her breath left her lips, she too was tethered to the Lich King- or at least the man that he had been, once, the man that had held her and kissed her and told her he loved her. She loved him even still, in some carefully concealed piece of her heart, and she suspected that she could read every book in existence and never find an answer as to how she could make herself stop.

She forced herself to shake away the thoughts, to refocus her attention on the task at hand, and to ignore the one fact that she had always struggled to grasp when so many others had come to her so easily- there were some things that could not be studied, some knowledge that could not obtained, some things that could not be found in the pages of tomes.

Sometimes, the only way to learn her lessons was to live through them.


End file.
